~"the gruffoto will be shot in the courtyard in five minutes!"

As promissed some almost 8 months ago, I've finally put together a gryphon model- which I am hoping our resident ranting gryphon will appreciate.

---- Stop here if you're not into 3D technobabble ----
Designated M28 because it's the #28th fully completed character model made to date.
I should point out that this model will in time become fully animated with lipsync (or beaksync if you will) features. It should be easily dooable using maya's morph animation system. In addition, I may even look into making lipsync techiques that allow streamlined speech posing.

The wings are a new thing. and though they need abit of work, I'm certain that with a few texture tweaks I can make glitch free animated feathers. Currently they fold not using bones but with morphs so their posability is extremely limited, with only 'full extension and retraction' as their pose targets

On a lesser note, this model is also one of the most advanced made to date, featuring a body mesh that is broken up into segments which have individually hand sewn UV maps for the fur. As well. the high level of fur coverage means the mesh itself is barely 60k in polycount. and while the texture does not incorperate SSS because of the extensive fur coverage. certain extremeties DO incorpertate proceedurals with overlayed photo textures to enhance realism.
The mesh is fully detachable into it's component bits and customisable with the minimum of effort, this ensures that it's possible to even lop the bird half off the top and convert the model into an anthro lion in a few short hours. Coversly, a full avian lower half can also be created .. but thats something I'll leave for the future.